The Pear

It’s the consistency of flesh that drives us,
how a pome ascends the stairs
of its origin. A boy shakes
pears down off the higher branches
as his friends scavenge underneath,
groping for the thing necks.
If you find yourself holding one,
hungry, if that’s the word,
then you are testament
to what festers in its fattened lobe
like a ball of sugar bees.
Here is Augustine, his thin
fingers tearing into skin
that barely holds the pulp
around its core. Poised nudes
forever in their sunny chairs,
they await whatever plucking
comes. When they’re eaten
with darkness plunging
always further into their hearts,
a few seeds ache then swell black
as appetite. Or as their profile
imitates a lover’s falling
breasts, we take them in
as we do our own bodies,
as infants do, wanting anything
to give our wanting form.

Credit

Poem from Consolation Miracle, reprinted with permission of Southern Illinois University Press

Author

Chad Davidson

Chad Davidson is the author of From the Fire Hills (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014), The Last Predicta (Southern Illinois University Press, 2008), and Consolation Miracle (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003).